Australia – the dreamed destination

Once in high school, they asked us to write an essay about our dreams, my dream back then was to visit Australia and specifically to see koalas. 20 years later this dream come true, and although we didn’t get to see the koalas, we saw a burst of biodiversity and magical landscapes.
Australia was nothing like I expected. Many people told me that Australia is a big village and I imagined straight roads with no cars, yellow soils where one or two occasional kangaroos are grazing in the sunshine. I thought, on our way from Canberra to Gold Coast I will be driving at least half the way. But to my surprise, the roads were huge, busy and highly complicated, If you add to this our inadequate car Fiat Punto you will correctly guess that I didn’t touch the steering wheel at all. However I navigated. A lady with a strange African accent in my cellphone’s GPS was accompanied by swearing of my sweating husband, who I believe developed lots of gray hairs after our travel.

The roads were not the only surprise, soon after arrival to Sydney we discovered how green this part of Australia was. Every corner spoils you with new bird species (and other animals as well) and sophisticated plants. I had never seen so many species at one place in my life, the same impression I got from my husband about the underwater world after he did a couple of dives near Gold Coast.
Meeting and interacting with wildlife is what I’m looking for when I travel. It turned out that Australia as best suited for travelers like me, who cannot be satisfied with animal parks or zoos. There were many opportunities for us to see koalas at numerous animal parks along the way but we don’t want to encourage places like this that keep animals in captivity. We looked for koalas at Bongil Bongil National Park, but to see them you need to be there in the early morning, and unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for that. I wasn’t disappointed because we saw so many other incredible species.

From my experience, the best places to see wild animals in cities (birds specifically) are botanical gardens. Sydney and Canberra botanical gardens welcomed us with huge flocks of various colorful parrots, honeyeater, ibises, kookaburras and other birds big and small. The highlight of the Blue Mountains’ three sisters walk was a pair of lyrebirds - incredible creatures who imitate various city sounds, like that of an ambulance or a chainsaw to attract females. Royal National Park with its dry eucalyptus forest and clear blue ocean introduced us with little blue wrens. Breeding plumage of this bird is brilliant iridescent blue contrasting with black - the most beautiful colors I’ve ever seen. In Coffs Harbour, we walked up the Mutton Bird Island, we spent only 5 minutes on the whale watching platform when we saw a school of whales, most likely humpback whales, we watched them swimming along the coast to the South. We swam with lots of green turtle out of the coast of Coolangatta, Gold Coast and we had many more incredible encounters with animals, including huge Australian bush turkey, soaring birds of prey, curious currawongs, kangaroos and wallabies, ghost crabs and lots of fish. This was the best holidays in my adult life.
 Australia has everything that you desire - all year round sunshine, clear blue sea (and warm), lots of National Parks with incredible biodiversity. The further from Sydney the nicer the people the more relaxed lifestyle, the less traffic. And we are so lucky that we are so close to this dreamed destination.